speedily found out that the most disagreeable part of the
business was that it couldn't be done.  When I saw in the
glass the haggard and hunted expression which the
experiences of the past few weeks had stamped on my
erstwhile placid countenance, I could scarcely feel
surprised that the few friends and relations I possessed
refused to recognize me in my altered guise, and persisted
in their obstinate but widely shared belief that it was I
who had been done to death on the highway.  To make matters
worse, infinitely worse, an aunt of the really murdered man,
an appalling female of an obviously low order of
intelligence, identified me as her nephew, and gave the
authorities a lurid account of my depraved youth and of her
laudable but unavailing efforts to spank me into a better
way.  I believe it was even proposed to search me for
finger-prints.''

  ``But,'' said the Chaplain, ``surely your educational
attainments---''

  ``That was just the crucial point,'' said the condemned;
``that was where my lack of specialization told so fatally
against me.  The dead Salvationist, whose identity I had so
lightly and so disastrously adopted, had possessed a veneer
of cheap modern education.  It should have been easy to
demonstrate that my learning was on altogether another plane
to his, but in my nervousness I bungled miserably over test
after test that was put to me.  The little French I had ever
known deserted me; I could not render a simple phrase about
the gooseberry of the gardener into that language, because I
had forgotten the French for gooseberry.''

  The Chaplain again wriggled uneasily in his seat.  ``And
then,'' resumed the condemned, ``came the final
discomfiture.  In our village we had a modest little
debating club, and I remembered having promised, chiefly, I
suppose, to please and impress the doctor's wife, to give a
sketchy kind of lecture on the Balkan Crisis.  I had relied
on being able to get up my facts from one or two standard
works, and the back-numbers of certain periodicals.  The
prosecution had made a careful note of the circumstance that
the man whom I claimed to be---and actually was---had posed
locally as some sort of second-hand authority on Balkan
affairs, and, in the midst of a string of questions on
indifferent topics, the examining counsel asked me with a
diabolical suddenness if I could tell the Court the
whereabouts of Novibazar.  I felt the question to be a
crucial one; something told me that the answer was St.
Petersburg or Baker Street.  I hesitated, looked helplessly
round at the sea of tensely expectant faces, pulled myself
together, and chose Baker Street.  And then I knew that
everything was lost.  The prosecution had no difficulty in
demonstrating that an individual, even moderately versed in
the affairs of the Near East, could never have so
unceremoniously dislocated Novibazar from its accustomed
corner of the map.  It was an answer which the Salvation
Army captain might conceivably have made---and I had made
it.  The circumstantial evidence connecting the Salvationist
with the crime was overwhelmingly convincing, and I had
inextricably identified myself with the Salvationist.  And
thus it comes to pass that in ten minutes' time I shall be
hanged by the neck until I am dead in expiation of the
murder of myself, which murder never took place, and of
which, in any case, I am necessarily innocent.''

			     *

  When the Chaplain returned to his quarters, some fifteen
minutes later, the black flag was floating over the prison
tower.  Breakfast was waiting for him in the dining-room,
but he first passed into his library, and, taking up the
_Times_ Atlas, consulted a map of the Balkan Peninsula.  ``A
thing like that,'' he observed, closing the volume with a
snap, ``might happen to any one.''

		 THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP

  The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping,
particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do
women ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested
fact that they go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee
goes flower-visiting, but do they shop in the practical
sense of the word? Granted the money, time, and energy, a
resolute course of shopping transactions would naturally
result in having one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly
supplied, whereas it is notorious that women servants (and
housewives of all classes) make it almost a point of honour
not to be supplied with everyday necessities.  ``We shall be
out of starch by Thursday,'' they say with fatalistic
foreboding, and by Thursday they are out of starch.  They
have predicted almost to a minute the moment when their
supply would give out, and if Thursday happens to be early
closing day their triumph is complete.  A shop where starch
is stored for retail purposes possibly stands at their very
door, but the feminine mind has rejected such an obvious
source for replenishing a dwindling stock.  ``We don't deal
there'' places it at once beyond the pale of human resort.
And it is noteworthy that just as a sheep-worrying dog
seldom molests the flocks in his near neighbourhood, so a
woman rarely deals with shops in her immediate vicinity.